Intel announces “Core i7″ processor based on Nehalem

Intel has officially announced the new name for their upcoming desktop processors which will replace current Penryn-based Core 2 products. The new processors will be called “Core i7″ and there will in fact be an “Extreme Edition” as well, which should have an unlocked multiplier.

Unfortunately, that’s all they’re officially saying for now. Here is a list of Nehalem’s specs, based on what we know from recent showings at IDF and Computex.

• Will be available with 2, 4, or 8 cores per processor (although the Core i7 will likely only come with either 2 or 4 for now). Cores will be monolithis (all cores on one die, which will cut out inter-core latency but may have lower yields).
• Simultaneous Multithreading is back – remember HyperThreading, which allows each core to run more than one thread at a time? This isn’t exactly the same, but should be similar. In other words, a Core i7 Quad will be capable of processing up to 8 threads at once.
• Should have an integrated memory controller, similar to AMD’s chips (which will help take motherboard chipsets out of the equation for memory performance)
• First versions will be based on a 45 nm fab process, with the quad core version holding upwards of 750 million transistors
• 32KB of L1 instruction cache and 32KB of L1 data cache per core
• 256KB L2 cache per core
• Each core gets 2-3MB L3 cache, but will be shared (so a Core i7 Duo may have 6MB of L3 cache for both cores to use, while a Quad may have 12MB).
• We’re not sure what clock speeds will be available initially, but early samples have been shown running up to 3.2 GHz

Nothing is official yet, of course. For that, be sure to stay tuned, as we will certainly be covering this launch very closely.